Slowly, From Killing Field To Brownfield To Baseball Field

That abandoned parcel of land by the water really should be a park, but unfortunately it’s never that easy:

A 107-acre parcel of land in Mariners Harbor — contaminated from its years as a shipbuilding site and a steel mill — came one step closer to being reborn as a city park yesterday, with a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The grant all but guarantees that decontamination of Mariners Marsh will begin next year. The site has been eyed for its recreational potential since the early 1990s, when former Mayor David Dinkins built two baseball fields there and dubbed it the “field of dreams.”

The fields soon deteriorated after federal agents ripped them up in search of murder victims.